But then there comes that moment rare
When, for no cause that I can find,
The little voices of the air
Sound above all the sea and wind.
        (Voices of the Air, 1-4)

1. Countrywomen
2. A Few Rules for Beginners
3. Voices of the Air

Notes on Life and Works

Short-story writer and poet, Katherine Mansfield, a pseudonym for Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp (from 1910), was born on October 14, 1888, in Wellington, New Zealand. She was educated in the cello at Queen's College, London, 1903-1906, after which she returned to study music in New Zealand 1907-08. She came back to London in 1908, married George Bowden (a musician), March 2, 1909, separated from him the same day, and afterwards gave birth in Bavaria to a stillborn baby by Garnet Trowell, another musician. This led to her first volume of fiction, In a German Pension (1909). Her life was a train of hardships. Suffering from gonorrhea, she was unable to have children afterwards. Being bisexual, she had a long-term liaison with Ida Baker, but after meeting John Middleton Murry in 1911, they lived together until she divorced Bowden and married Murry on May 3, 1918. Mansfield lost Lesley Heron Beauchamp, her brother, to a wartime accident in 1915. This death led to some of her greatest stories. With Murry, she co-founded a short-lived magazine, Signature, with D. H. Lawrence in 1916. Suffering from tuberculosis, she entered George Gurdieff's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man near Fontainebleau and died from the disease in January 9, 1923.

• Boddy, Gillian. Katherine Mansfield, the Woman and the Writer (Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin Books Australia, 1988). PR 6025 A57Z5674 Robarts Library
• Mansfield, Katherine. Bliss, and Other Stories (London: Constable, 1920). PR 6025 A57 B5 1920a Victoria College Rare Books
• --. Collected stories (London: Constable, 1962). PR 6025 .A57 A15 Robarts Library
• --. The Dove's Nest and Other Stories (London: Constable, 1923). end M36 D684 1923a Fisher Rare Book Library
• --. Four poems, ed. Jeffrey Meyers (London: Privately printed at the Press of Eric & Joan Stevens, 1980). end pam M36 F687 Fisher Rare Book Library
• --. The Garden Party, and Other Stories (New York: Modern Library, 1922). PR 6025 A57G37 Robarts Library
• In a German Pension (London: Stephen Swift, 1911)
• --. Journal, ed. J. Middleton Murry (London: Constable, 1927). end M36 A185 1927 Fisher Rare Book Library
• --. Poems (London: Constable, 1923). PR 6025 A57P6 Robarts Library
• --. Poems of Katherine Mansfield, ed. Vincent O'Sullivan (Aukland: Oxford University Press, 1988). PR 6025 A57 P64 Robarts Library
• --. Something Childish and Other Stories (London: Constable, 1924). end M36 S66 1924 Fisher Rare Book Library
• The Katherine Mansfield notebooks, ed. Margaret Scott (Canterbury, N.Z.: Lincoln University Press; Wellington, N.Z.: Daphne Brasell Associates, 1997). 2 vols. PR 9639.3 .M258A6 Robarts Library
• Katherine Mansfield, publications in Australia, 1907-09, comp. Jean E. Stone (Sydney: Wentworth Books, 1977). PR 6025 A57A6 1977 Robarts Library

Biographical information

Given name: Katherine Mansfield
Family name: Beauchamp
Birth date: 14 October 1888
Death date: 17 October 1923
Nationality: New Zealander
Family relations
          husband: John Middleton Murry (from 1918 to 1923)
Education: Wellington Girls' High School
Literary period: Modern
Occupation: writer
Residences
          Fontainebleau, France to 1923
          Wellington, New Zealand to 1888
          London, England: 1903 to 1906
          New Zealand: 1907 to 1908
          London, England: 1910 to 1914
Illness: Consumption: 1915
Cause of death: Pulmonary haemorrhage
Buried at: Avon cemetery